ISRAEL
It is a myth that Israelis a happy melting pot of Jewish nationalities. The Yemenite Jews have experienced a certain amount of prejudice, due being “darker” than many other Israelis, ever since their arrival in Israel in 1949.
The black Ethiopian Jews have experienced enormous social, economic and religious discrimination in Israel since they began arriving in Israelin late numbers in the 1980s, and their societal problems in Israel are analogous to those of African-Americans in the United States.
While American Jews gave generous financial and leadership support to the aliyah of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, and frequently supplied assistance to Ethiopian Jews in Ethiopia and Israel, American and European white Jewish communities have, until recently, often been unwelcoming to Jews of color, including half-Jewish people of mixed heritage.
Things are so bad in Israel for the Ethiopian Jews that their leaders have recently asked for the passage of affirmative action laws to protect the Ethiopian Jews of Israel, stating that decades of attempted integration efforts have failed, due to Israeli society’s racism.